In the case where several jobs are continuously printed by a printer of a printing system, a sorting mark called a job separation mark is printed between one job and another for making it easy to recognize a separation between the jobs.
For a continuous paper printer, according to a prior art method, the above sorting mark has been printed as follows:
First, a primary system simply creates a mark form command at a separation between jobs and sends out an end separator date as a page date indicating the termination of the previous job.
When receiving a mark form command, the printer produces a blank page, and when receiving an end separator date, it prints five end separator pages. In order to allow easy sorting in the case where continuous paper is bent or folded, a job separation mark is printed out on a perforated line between end separator pages (sorting operation).
The technology of this kind has been disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. Hei 4-65261 and Hei 3-167624.
According to the above prior art method, a primary system sends out only a sorting command indicating a sorting time at a separation between jobs and the termination of the previous job, and a printer prints a predetermined number of sorting pages.
Accordingly, the above-described prior art printing system cannot satisfy an individual user's particular needs to reduce the number of end separator pages or job separation marks to three pages in order to save paper, or to increase the number of job separation marks to seven pages because the separation between jobs is hard to recognize, and therefore, the printing system is poor in usability.